Oracle has agreed to accept zero dollars worth of damages from Google, three weeks after losing the major portions of the case in which Oracle accused Google of violating Java patents and copyrights in Android.

After one partial victory on the issue of whether Google infringed copyrights, Oracle lost its argument that Google violated patents. Oracle then lost a ruling that held that the structure of the Java APIs asserted by the company couldn't be copyrighted at all. The rulings left Oracle little room except to appeal, and today in court the two sides agreed to a damages total of "zero." That's only a few billion less than Oracle originally sought.

Oracle could have sought damages for the small amount of code copying Google was found guilty of, but it chose not to. A stipulation and proposed order that Oracle and Google submitted to Judge William Alsup in US District Court in San Francisco today called for $0 of damages "related to Google’s infringement of Oracle’s copyrights in connection with (1) the rangeCheck code in TimSort.java and ComparableTimSort.java, and (2) the eight decompiled files (seven 'Impl.java' files and one 'ACL' file)."

Upon seeing the proposal, Judge Alsup asked, "Is there a catch I need to be aware of?" according to on-scene reporting by the IDG News Service. Oracle has said it will appeal the bigger claims in the case to the Federal Circuit appeals court. The move today appears to be Oracle waiving its rights to damages in order to get the trial over and move on to the appeal. When asked by Alsup when the parties would be in court again, Oracle attorney Michael Jacobs said, "I hope we see you again after an appeal"—drawing a few laughs from those in attendance. If Oracle were to win its appeal, parts of the case could go in front of Alsup once again.

If Oracle were to win its appeal, parts of the case could go in front of Alsup once again.

Given the extremely negative view expressed of Oracle's entire argument in Alsup's ruling, how would that even work? If he were overruled on a technical point (e.g. the copyright on SSO), he'd still be responsible for deciding damages which he has already stated to be trivial.

This will be appealed to the Federal Circuit in Washington D.C., not the 9th Circuit. See 28 USC 1295(a)(1). All cases with a patent claim go to the Federal Circuit, not the regional circuit. Even if the appeal is to the copyright claims, it still goes to the Federal Circuit. Had Oracle only brought copyright claims, then it would go the 9th Circuit.

redleader -- Happens all the time in the American legal system. District judges don't always get it right. They aren't usually going to hold a grudge about it.

So does Google actually have to write a $0 check? That would be hilarious. Also, where will Google get all that money?

I had Fidelity write me a .01 check before because they're bone heads and didn't do their math right. I didn't ask them to do it, but as you can believe I did have a great long laugh about it. Never did cash the thing, probably past the 90 days now...

I had Fidelity write me a .01 check before because they're bone heads and didn't do their math right. I didn't ask them to do it, but as you can believe I did have a great long laugh about it. Never did cash the thing, probably past the 90 days now...

Fidelity was probably legally obliged to reimburse you. The funny thing is it probably cost them a few bucks in labor.

What a circus this is.. this whole software patent idea should be tossed, the sooner the better.

Phase 1: Set a precedence that software shouldn't be patented.Phase 2:Phase 3: Sanity!

/wakes up/

Phase 1: High priced lawyers spin the mind of the jury into believing that patenting software is good for everyone.Phase 2: After case is won, companies sue smaller ones into oblivion.Phase 3: Profits!

In other news, I am having a f***ing hard time hiring good Java engineers, with solid algos and datastructures skills (hint, hint...), because everybody is jumping boat and doing Ruby, Python or whatever other OSS language is all the hype for the cool kids.

Normally I would applaud with both hands and feet using open source tools... as in: free and unencumbered.But here, practicality is getting in the way of ideology, and I have to give credit where it is due: Java as a language might be a boring blob, but Sun made the JVM a mightily amazing piece of engineering.

When you are doing realtime knowledge mining on terabytes of data... a state of the art GC and JIT compiler make a whole lot of a difference. And I simply don't see myself going back to C and starting again to pool memory chunks, unroll loops or inline methods by hand because gcc can't figure out if it's a good deal or not.

Now if someone would spend the same amount of energy that was spent on the Linux kernel building as OSS the next generation smart VM... that would be a dream. One that, just like vmlinuz, would serve us and the advancement of CS for many years to come... Anyone? (Hey, don't look at me... I simply don't have the skills...)

In other news, I am having a f***ing hard time hiring good Java engineers, with solid algos and datastructures skills (hint, hint...), because everybody is jumping boat and doing Ruby, Python or whatever other OSS language is all the hype for the cool kids.

Normally I would applaud with both hands and feet using open source tools... as in: free and unencumbered.But here, practicality is getting in the way of ideology, and I have to give credit where it is due: Java as a language might be a boring blob, but Sun made the JVM a mightily amazing piece of engineering.

When you are doing realtime knowledge mining on terabytes of data... a state of the art GC and JIT compiler make a whole lot of a difference. And I simply don't see myself going back to C and starting again to pool memory chunks, unroll loops or inline methods by hand because gcc can't figure out if it's a good deal or not.

Now if someone would spend the same amount of energy that was spent on the Linux kernel building as OSS the next generation smart VM... that would be a dream. One that, just like vmlinuz, would serve us and the advancement of CS for many years to come... Anyone? (Hey, don't look at me... I simply don't have the skills...)

In other news, I am having a f***ing hard time hiring good Java engineers, with solid algos and datastructures skills (hint, hint...), because everybody is jumping boat and doing Ruby, Python or whatever other OSS language is all the hype for the cool kids.

A few thoughts:1) Where are you looking for these engineers? If you're in the US, there are lots of folks on unemployment that may not have 25+ years of Java (the HR listed requirement), but are actually pretty competant. Try hiring someone with a CS degree, and training them.

2) What are you paying? Benefits? With folks jumping ship to ASP, C#, Python, CSS, in order to get a decent paying job, how are you competing?

3) Oracle already said that they aren't letting go. They're still trying to kill Java dead by royalty asphyxiation, and Patent bullying. Who wants to be the next COBOL programmer (coding a prolific, yet outdated language)? I took COBOL in college, was actually pretty damn good at it, but refused to list it on my resume. Planning for the future in this era of pension extinction, and lower and lower 401K matching, means planning for the future is more critical than ever, if you plan on retiring before you die of old age in your cube.

More disturbing testimony to the depraved state-of-mind that is Larry Ellison. Look, the man-child monster just bought most of Lanai'i Island over there in Hawaii. Larry Ellison is a cancer. This assault on Google is not the last we'll hear from this daemon.

More disturbing testimony to the depraved state-of-mind that is Larry Ellison. Look, the man-child monster just bought most of Lanai'i Island over there in Hawaii. Larry Ellison is a cancer. This assault on Google is not the last we'll hear from this daemon.

I think you mean "demon". AFAIK, Larry Ellison is not stoppable using sysctl.

dm00 wrote:

ylandrin wrote:

In other news, I am having a f***ing hard time hiring good Java engineers, with solid algos and datastructures skills (hint, hint...), because everybody is jumping boat and doing Ruby, Python or whatever other OSS language is all the hype for the cool kids.

OK, this is going to go somewhat OOT, but here goes.

dm00 wrote:

A few thoughts:1) Where are you looking for these engineers?

I'm in the Valley. And if there are any Java developers on unemployment, or even junior CS grads with some Java experience, they are not breaking down the gates :/

dm00 wrote:

2) What are you paying? Benefits? With folks jumping ship to ASP, C#, Python, CSS, in order to get a decent paying job, how are you competing?

We are a startup. But even before talking about salary (or benefits, or stocks, we are well funded and pretty open on all of those), we need to have candidates first... and we are not getting a whole lot.

dm00 wrote:

3) Oracle already said that they aren't letting go. They're still trying to kill Java dead by royalty asphyxiation, and Patent bullying. Who wants to be the next COBOL programmer (coding a prolific, yet outdated language)?

Well... while Java obsolescence might be brought on by a variety of factors, from the next cool thing to muddy legal ground, a lot of people are still using good ol' C in cutting edge applications. So... define outdated?

However, it is irrelevant compared to the true strength of Java as far as we are concerned. Not the coolness of the language, not the fact that it was prolific, not the fact that they are tons of tools built for it and around it (we have to rebuild our own for efficiency reasons anyways).

In fact, it's simply not about the language: Scala or Jython might work as well as POJ.It's all about the JVM. The Sun JVM, to be precise (as we see a 15% perf gap between the Sun VM and OpenJDK).

Is it my imagination, or is Lanai the perfect place to build a private spaceport to compete with, I don't know, the Isle of Man? Looks flat enough on gEarth, it's damn close to the equator, and it's on major shipping lines.

If *I* were the 6th richest man on earth in this decade, my (not-so-secret) base would definitely have space access....

3) Oracle already said that they aren't letting go. They're still trying to kill Java dead by royalty asphyxiation, and Patent bullying. Who wants to be the next COBOL programmer (coding a prolific, yet outdated language)?

I have less-than-zero legal acumen, and I feel like I've missed something significant:isn't java OSS? What exactly does Oracle own? I (naively) thought the Sun JVM was OSS also. Where the hell does the API specification fit in? Having been a Sun champion since before the dotcom bubble popped, I'm still totally confused as to where these patents and copyrights *came* from.

That said, the comparison to COBOL is a loooooow blooooooow. Design by committee != gobbled up by the devil.